Fresh Fruit Mahjong Connection

Fresh Fruit Mahjong Connection is a link board rather than a stacked one: the produce lies flat in a single field, and a pair vanishes when a path can be drawn between the two halves of it. WillingGames.com published it in 2020, and the question it keeps asking is how far up the layouts you can get before one seals.

The path rule is the entire puzzle. A line joining two identical fruits may turn at most twice and may not cross a tile still in the field, so two cherries at opposite corners are often legal while two inside a packed block are not. Clearing the field is what carries you to the next layout. Two turns and nothing in the way is also the rule in Double Deuce Mahjong.

A clock runs against you, and the arrangements grow more crowded as you climb. Hints and a shuffle are provided for a field with no legal link left, though leaning on them early leaves nothing in reserve for the boards further up.

Full screen matters more than usual with produce on the tiles, since a plum and a grape read alike in a small window and a wrong pick costs seconds you are already short of. Newcomers clear the centre and then find the outer ranks walled in; taking the edges down first keeps open the corridors a two-turn line needs. The same two-bend path rule drives Spooky Link.

1. Scan the field for two tiles showing the same fruit.
2. Check the route between them: straight, or bending no more than twice, and clear of every tile still in play.
3. Select both to clear the pair and widen the lanes around it.
4. Empty the field before the clock stops in order to unlock the next layout.

• Strip the outer ranks — edge fruit in Fresh Fruit Mahjong Connection has short routes, and removing it opens lanes into the middle.
• Trace before you click — a third turn makes the link illegal however close the pair looks.
• Break up the long walls — an unbroken row of tiles blocks every route behind it.
• Keep hints for the upper layouts, which pack in more produce and leave fewer open lanes.
• Switch to full screen — plums and grapes are only a few pixels apart at window size.